Suver says other options were considered

Ridgecrest Regional Hospital Chief Executive Officer Jim Suver said several options were explored before deciding to become a critical-access hospital.

By John V. Cianijciani@ridgecrestca.com

Ridgecrest Regional Hospital Chief Executive Officer Jim Suver said several options were explored before deciding to become a critical-access hospital. “We even used outside consultants. CAH status was the best option to protect our community’s hospital and save jobs in our community,” he said. “An option if we had not done CAH would been to eliminate more than 100 jobs at the hospital (20 percent of our workforce) which would have resulted in LESS healthcare services for our community.” He said the hospital would also have had to eliminate our physician recruitment for the community. “CAH allows us to offer many services — including bringing specialists to our community — and is the best option especially considering the effects of healthcare reform,” Suver said. He said the new tower had to be built to comply with state seismic regulations, and CAH partially covers this expense.Suver said the CAH status does not affect outpatient surgeries, which is the majority of the surgeries performed at RRH. “Based on past data, CAH status should not impact the amount of inpatient surgeries in general,” he said. “More and more surgeries are done on an outpatient basis which is not subject to the cap.”He said if sequestration takes effect, critical-access hospitals are exempt from the sequestration adjustment, but is always subject to change in future years. “CAH status has spared RRH some of the negative effects of the federal budget issues and healthcare reform changes,” said Suver. “Sadly, the status does not help us with the state budget issues. Next year the state is decreasing Medi-Cal reimbursement by $200,000 for RRH.He said increased Medicare reimbursements as a result of the designation will keep our hospital open. “RRH will treat all patients regardless of payor source. CAH status does not impact the care provided to insured patients,” he said.Suver denied surgeon Dr. Paul Stemmer’s claim that there is an antagonistic attitude between the hospital and doctors outside the RRH umbrella. “We support all physicians in our community and strive to have a positive relationship,” he said. “For example, RRH pays Dr. Stemmer a large stipend to be on call for our emergency department. The hospital also subsidizes a hospitalist program ($1 million) that benefits all primary care physicians in the community by allowing them to focus on their office practices. This service was offered at their request.” Suver said the hospital provides services to all physicians on its medical staff. “However, the hospital gets concerned when providers do not take insurances or see Medicare/Medi-Cal patients leading to access problems for our community members,” he said. “In addition, we get concerned when insured patients are diverted to facilities that the physician owns such as China Lake Surgery Center (not owned by RRH) and then the patients receive large bills due to the physician-owned facility not taking any insurance plans. This hurts our community members.”